Chapter 1. The language of Margaret Atwood -- Part I: Misdirection -- Chapter 2. Burying and misdirection in The Blind Assassin -- Chapter 3. Memories and reconstrual in Alias Grace -- Part II: Ambient storms -- Chapter 4. Cold revenge and the stylistics of ambience in Stone Mattress -- Chapter 5. Theatrical illusion and the performance of fictional minds in Hag-Seed -- Part III: Doubling and splitting -- Chapter 6. Double consciousness and speculative worlds in Oryx and Crake.-Chapter 7. Voiceover narration and the split self in The Handmaid’s Tale TV series -- Chapter 8. Future readers.

This book explores Margaret Atwood’s distinctive use of language and style, across a selection of her prose texts, through reader-centred, cognitive stylistic analyses. It examines how strategies of misdirection, processes of doubling, and the creation of textual ambience play an essential role in Atwood’s contemporary prose fiction style. With reference to contemporary scholarship in stylistics and literary criticism, each chapter presents a detailed linguistic analysis of a different text from Atwood’s oeuvre, from Alias Grace (1996) to Old Babes in the Wood (2023). Above all, the book studies experiences of reading Atwood’s works, situating and contextualising her signature linguistic choices in relation to real readers’ responses to her writing. The book should be of interest to readers specialising in the work of Margaret Atwood, including those with stylistics, cognitive linguistics, and literary studies backgrounds. Chloe Harrison is Senior Lecturer in English Language and Literature at Aston University, UK. She specialises in cognitive stylistics, re-reading and contemporary fiction.